Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to carbon nanodots, and more specifically, to the use of carbon nanodots or variants thereof for replacement of expensive fluorophores or other luminescence labels, wherein signal emissions from excited carbon nanodots is enhanced by close proximity to metallic nanoparticles.
Description of Related Art
The technology of biology has grown from a purely descriptive and phenomenological discipline to that of a set of advanced molecular sciences. Amongst these advances is the use of bio-sensing in technical areas as clinical diagnosis, medicine, and bioengineering. Sensing single or minuet amount of biomolecules and/or chemicals requires integration of the highly selective recognition properties of biomaterials with unique electronic, photonic, and catalytic features of nanomaterials. Proteins, nucleic acid fragments and their biomolecular complexes have nanometric dimensions comparable with the inorganic nanomaterials, of which the inherently high surface-to-volume ratio offers the opportunity for efficient bio-binding and superb sensitivity in detecting biomolecules. A wide range of nanomaterials and sensing techniques, including absorbance (via surface plasmon), electrochemical or electrical, colorimetry, photoluminescence, and chemiluminescence have been explored.
In the last several years, there has been a growing literature on the synthesis and utility of carbon nanodots, also known as carbon nanoparticles.1-3 Similar to the well-known and commercialized semiconductor quantum dots, the carbon nanoparticles display high quantum yields and photostability, but conversely have low cytoxicity and excellent biocompatibility. Subsequently, these new luminescent labels have found use in biological imaging applications.4 As with all the new luminescent particle embodiments reported to date, absolute brightness, photostability as well as optical tunability remain primary concerns.
Thus, it would be advantageous to able to use carbon nanodots as a luminescent particle while increasing enhancement of the signal intensity and improving photostability.